ABilly Jones-Hennin was born in 1942 on St. John’s, Antigua and adopted at age three by civil rights activists with nine other adopted kids.  After growing up in South Carolina and Virginia, ABilly served in the US Marine Corps, and graduated from Virginia State University in 1967.

Early on, ABilly knew he was attracted to men, but he took his father’s advice (who later turned out to be bisexual), got married, and had three kids. After seven years, he and his wife separated. By this point, Billy was living in Minneapolis. That’s where his LGBTQ activism got started. By nature an inquisitive person, ABilly began questioning his identity as a gay man as well as the entire experience of being both a sexual and a racial minority. Migrating to Washington DC, ABilly began identifying as bisexual, and swung his activism in that direction.

In 1978, ABilly helped launch the National Coalition of Black Gays (NCBG) in Columbia, Maryland, the first national advocacy organization for African American gay men and lesbians. A year later, ABilly helped to mobilize the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights – and that same historic weekend, helped to convene the National Third World LGBT Conference at Howard University, which gave rise to Howard University’s Lambda Student Alliance, the first openly LGBT organization at an HBCU.

Over the subsequent decades, ABilly has taken on countless other leadership roles within the black and LGBTQ movements including minority affairs director of the National AIDS Network, founding member and co-chair of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, board member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (today known as The Task Force), and board member of BiNet USA. Along the way, ABilly found time to earn his master’s degree in social work at Howard University.

Between the two of them, ABilly and Cris, his partner of 39 years, have five children, nine grandchildren, and six great grandkids. They welcomed OUTWORDS into their Washington DC home in August 2016, on our first major East Coast interview swing. Dealing with some major back issues, ABilly moved in gingerly fashion – but his hospitality was deep, warm, and genuine. He and Cris promptly invited our interview team to visit them at their winter home in Quintana Roo, Mexico. We’re still trying to make that happen!